CCA's Writers Series is open to the public and hosted by the MFA Program in Writing. Featured events also comprise the Friday Seminar course requirement for MFA Writing candidates.

CCA welcomes to the Writers Series the acclaimed poet W. S. Di Piero, 2012 winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize -- one of the most prestigious awards an American poet has ever received.

William Simone Di Piero was born in 1945 in Philadelphia and earned degrees from St. Joseph’s College and San Francisco State College. A poet, essayist, art critic, and translator, Di Piero has taught at institutions such as Northwestern University, Louisiana State University, and Stanford, where he is professor emeritus of English and serves on the faculty in the prestigious Stegner Poetry Workshop.

Di Piero’s poetry is known for its gritty realism. Populated with characters and settings reminiscent of the South Philadelphia neighborhood of his boyhood and the Italian-American working-class families he grew up with, Di Piero’s poetry frequently makes use of colloquial language and diction.

Among Di Piero's long list of notable accomplishments are the following:

Awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund

Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001

A regular art reviewer for the San Diego Reader

Published a number of volumes of essays on literary and visual art, including Memory and Enthusiasm (1989); Out of Eden: Essays on Modern Art (1991); Shooting the Works: On Poetry and Pictures (1996); a collection of memoirs, essays, notes, and art criticism, City Dog (2009), and When Can I See You Again: New Art Writings (2010)

Authored numerous collections of poetry, including Country of Survivors (1974); The First Hour (1982); The Dog Star (1990); Skirts and Slacks (2001); Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems (2007); and Nitro Nights (2011)

An award-winning translator of Italian poetry, Di Piero’s first translation, Giacomo Leopardi's Pensieri (1981), was nominated for a National Book Award. Other translations include Sandro Penna's This Strange Joy (1982), which received the Academy of American Poets Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award; Leonardo Sinisgalli's The Ellipse (1982); and Night of Shooting Stars (2011); and a translation of Euripides’s Ion (1996).